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Tuesday, March 29, 2016

SnoPed Two-fer: 1970 Chrysler Marine Sno Runner

Sometime on a cold winter day in the late 1960s, a jazzy suit wearing Chrysler product man had a brilliant idea. Imagine combining the snow slaying capability of a snowmobile with the fun & cost of a moped -- and the Sno Runner was born. Find these 1970s Chrysler Marine Sno Runners offered for $1,000 in La Habra, CA via craigslist.

On paper vellum, in a smoke filled 1960s Chrysler Outboard Marine division board room, the Sno Runner seemed like a sure thing -- basically a powered SkiBob, or half a snowmobile. Unfortunately for Chrysler, a recession was going to decimate their bottom line, and a 7 horsepower snow-ped that could barely hit 25mph on flat ground made about as much sense to a consumer as a pepto pink Dodge Challenger.

Don't get me wrong, I think that a Sno Runner looks like a doozie of a good time, but then I like sketchy handling vehicles that might fall over at speed without a hint of warning. With a wheeled vehicle, even something as slow as a moped has a considerable advantage due to the magic of gyroscopic stability and the fact that tires grip the road exactly a million times better than a rigid mounted ski grips snow/slush/ice/the-edge-of-a-cliff.

I was skiing last month and watching snowmobiles zoom around the hillsides when a vision of a narrow, bike-like, powered mini snowmobile popped into my head. I thought I couldn't have been the first to think of this, although I've never seen such a thing. Glad to know that good ol' Chrysler Corp was way ahead of me on this one!

Wow! The Sno-Ped just caused flashbacks of a summer in the 80's riding one of these [img]http://www.deckjetwatercraft.com/ultranautics/art/wetbike3.jpg[/img] Thankfully the SnowBike was able to rinse it away.

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